The Van Halen co-founder and guitarist Eddie Van Halen was one of the most influential musicians of all time, who really changed forever the course of guitar playing. Hard Rock music certainly wouldn’t be the same without him and he really blew millions of people away when his band released their self-titled debut album in 1978.
But who were the artists who impressed Eddie? He once mentioned three musicians who blew him away.
3 musicians that Eddie Van Halen said blew him away
Cream
It was in an interview with Steve Baltin in 2009, that Eddie talked about some artists that blew him away. One of them was the first superband in the history of music: Cream. According to Eddie, the power-trio formed by Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker was the only band he was really into.
“The only band I was really over into was Cream. And the only thing I really liked about them was their live stuff. ‘Cause they played two verses, then go off and jam for 20 minutes, come back and do a chorus and end.”
“And I love the live jam stuff, the improvisation. ‘Cause it was nothing like the record, and that is why I loved Cream. ‘Cause Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce pushed Eric Clapton. I almost feel bad for Eric because half the time he probably didn’t know the one was because these guys were jazz players playing Marshall amps and loud as s**t. Listen to “I’m So Glad” on Goodbye Cream. If that doesn’t blow your f**king mind I don’t know what will,” Eddie Van Halen said.
He was a really big fan of what Eric Clapton did with the Bluesbreakers and Cream. He said many times the guitarist was an influence to him in the early days.
Peter Gabriel
Another artist that Eddie listed was the original Genesis vocalist Peter Gabriel. Eddie said a few times during the last years of his life that the last album he bought was Peter Gabriel’s “So” back in 1986. He loved that record and even presented the song “Red Rain” to his son Wolfgang Van Halen when he was still a kid.
“I love Peter Gabriel, not everything he does, I don’t even like everything I do. Sometimes I’ll write something, for instance a song called “Top Of The World,” everyone else liked it, I didn’t. I got outvoted and I wrote the damn song, it ended up on the record. (But) I didn’t like the song, everyone else did. I got outvoted. It’s personal preference, that’s all music is,” Eddie Van Halen said.
“So” was Peter Gabriel’s fifth solo studio album and remains as his best-selling one. It sold an estimated amount of more than 6 million copies worldwide and had famous tracks like “Sledgehammer”, “Red Rain”, “Don’t Give Up” and “In Your Eyes”.
Tori Amos
The third artist mentioned by Eddie was the American singer, keyboardist and pianist Tori Atmos, who started her career in 1978, one year after Van Halen released their first album. He said: “I love Tori Amos, not everything she does.”
She only was able to release her debut album “Little Earthquakes” in 1992 and since then more 15 studio albums have been released. Some of her most famous songs are “Crucify”, “Silent All These Years”, “God” and “Cornflake Girl”.
Her most successful single in the United States is “A Sorta Fairytale”, released in 2002 on her album “Scarlet’s Walk”. Her songs usually talk about sexuality, feminism, politics, religion and many other topics.